21 December 2000
Had a great game last Thursday (first time that's happened in a while). I decided that just griping about people not playing their positions properly wasn't doing any good—if I wanted things to be better, I should take matters into my own hands. That meant that every time T drifted to my side of the ice, I went to his until he was ready to get back on his own side. This worked really well: suddenly we weren't all bunched up, and holes were covered. I broke up a couple passes and blocked a shot this way.

Taping my socks on Thursday.

In the same compensating vein, I even stepped up to the faceoff circle when G, the Center on my line, got a penalty. We had an awesome shift and killed the penalty with no goal on us. (I've learned to get comfortable with faceoffs from my Monday night games, where I've started playing Center, so there was no question that I could move to the dot after the penalty.)

I left the ice on Thursday feeling exhilirated. Fun, fun, fun!

Unfortunately, this was not the case on Monday night. :( I left the ice that night totally pissed off, and feeling discriminated against for the first time since I've started playing. There've been hints before that the better players on our team consider me and Negin weak, but usually they manage to turn it into a positive (like the Master Plan to make us play Center to highlight our defensive skills). I kinda ignored the fact that the argument that the Wings were unbalanced wouldn't hold water if Negin & I played on the same line (can't have *that* happen!), and played along.

Not so Monday night. In our game against Excite2, the manuovering to limit the "damage" caused by me and Negin being on the ice was impossible to ignore. It started with K proposing that we go with 4 defensemen, 2 forward lines, and 2 floaters. I think it was Lars who asked the obvious question: "Why not 2 centers and 3 sets of wings?" This is the configuration we'd been playing with every other time we'd had 12 people. The reason, unstated: That the two centers were me & Negin.

K let it go for one period (in which Excite2 scored 4 or 5 goals), and then moved me & Negin to Right Wing, declaring, "we've got to win some faceoffs." Not that it did too much good—D, who switched with Negin, didn't win any that I saw. Ross, who was subbing for us, managed to salvage a few, at least. The kicker, though, was when we were down 6-1 and Excite2 managed to rack up three penalties in a row. That meant a 5 on 3 advantage for us for more than two minutes. It was my turn to go on the ice during the power play, but K waved me back and put J in instead. To be fair, J's our strongest skater and stickhandler, but after the other two insults, and considering the unlikelihood of us scoring 5 goals in a row, I was furious.

"Jesus, K, how fucking bad do you want to win? I paid for this league, too!" I screamed at him from the bench. Not very graceful, perhaps, but there you have it. We scored one goal on the power play, but so did they (yes, even with the two-man disadvantage, and with neither Negin nor I on the ice).

The final straw was when we got a penalty with less than 3 minutes to go in the 3rd period, down 7-2. We changed lines then, and Negin's line went on. So did J, even though it wasn't his line's turn. Someone on the bench noticed that we had 5 skaters on the ice instead of 4, and K yelled, "Negin! Get off!" I yelled right back, "Goddammit, do you really think 90 seconds is going to make a difference in this game? Let her skate!" Not a chance. Negin came off.

Well, I can only hope that in the next two bye weeks (because of Xmas and New Year's) I can (a) get over my anger, and (b) improve my play enough that K won't have a leg to stand on if he tries this shit again.